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Unbound
UK-based site applies the principle of "crowdfunding" to book publishing. Agent-recommended authors pitch their book ideas on the site. If you like their idea, you can pledge to support it. If they hit the target number of supporters, the author can go ahead and start writing. If the target isn't met, you can either get your pledge refunded in full or switch your pledge to another Unbound project. Pledging readers get backstage access to the creative process, including updates on the book’s progress, exclusive interviews, draft chapters, information about the author's backlist, and discussions with the author and other supporters.
Unbridled Books
Founded in 2003, Unbridled Books publishes fiction of high literary quality that also appeals to a broad audience. In an interview at the literary journal Ploughshares, editors Fred Ramey and Greg Michaelson expressed a preference for books that exude a spirit of hope and survival, not excluding dark subject matter but not ending in a place of despair. Authors in their catalog include Elise Blackwell, Ed Falco, Marc Estrin, Emily St. John Mandel, and Richard Kramer.
Unbroken Awareness
My life is now a floating shell
I am a vessel on that river.
The storm, the ship, the sea,
Whose shores we lost in crossing.
I can see the milky distances—
In your eyes, but you cannot see me.
A thin melon slice of first moon,
Melting into songs and slivers of ice.
You could feel small creatures dying.
Cowering humans in their burrows.
Fighting for lives other than theirs.
Aware they could not escape.
Each of us came into being
Knowing who we are,
What we are supposed to do
But why do you try to hold back—
The sands, falling in the hourglass?
I am now unconscious.
In a way—, but mute.
A little pearl of awareness,
But this pearl is not me.
Knowing yet unable.
I am now timeless!
All times and in all futures
I am a universe of windows
I cannot be touched again
I am in an endless dream
But I can see you outlined
Looking beyond what you know
One day the seeds would return
And life would continue.
Copyright 2007 by Tendai R. Mwanaka
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem comes to us from Zimbabwean poet Tendai R. Mwanaka. Its themes of ego-less awareness and awakening wisdom reminded me of Buddhist beliefs about the interconnectedness of all life, transcending boundaries of self and other, human and animal, or the living and the dead. The speaker's lyrical insights are comforting even when mysterious, because of their tone of tranquility and faith that eventually the listener will reach full understanding. The poem itself is a "pearl of awareness", polished and pure.
In the opening lines, the narrator seems to be reporting back from the other side of death. "My life is now a floating shell/I am a vessel on that river." Transformed by emptying, simplified, the speaker is content to be borne along by larger forces. The identity that once bounded his entire experience is seen from outside as merely one object in a wider landscape. It was a container for an awareness that now soars above it. (I regret having to assign a gender to the speaker when the whole point of the poem is to transcend such identity markers, but the limitations of English prose grammar require this.)
Contrast this open vista to the confined perspective of "Cowering humans in their burrows." Yet the speaker picks up on and encourages the listener's first stirrings of insight that other selves exist: "You could feel small creatures dying" and perhaps also the line "Fighting for lives other than theirs". This latter phrase could mean several things in the context of this poem. Are the human-creatures fighting to protect someone beyond their own selfish interests—the beginning of the empathy that leads to "unbroken awareness"? Or are they misunderstanding what is "theirs", clinging to an identity that they mistake for the fullness of life? As the speaker later says of himself, "A little pearl of awareness,/But this pearl is not me."
Mwanaka uses sound effectively to enhance the meditative mood of the poem. Listen to the S sounds in the first stanza, which replicate the feeling of identity dissolving: "The storm, the ship, the sea,/Whose shores we lost in crossing." They are joined by the hum of M sounds in the dreamy, beautiful images of the next stanza: "A thin melon slice of first moon,/Melting into songs and slivers of ice." Whiteness pervades the poem: pearls, milky distances, ice, moonlight. Because of this tactile richness, the poem never feels too abstract even though it puts across complex philosophical ideas.
The kernel of the poem, which reads like a miniature poem in itself, is the aphorism that is the fourth stanza:
Each of us came into being
Knowing who we are,
What we are supposed to do
But why do you try to hold back—
The sands, falling in the hourglass?
There are two ways of thinking about the significance of an individual life. One is the futile path of denying and resisting change and death, for fear that the self's evanescence makes life meaningless. The other is to recognize that change and death do not defeat the overall pattern of which each life is a unique part.
The speaker would like to communicate this comforting notion to those left on the other side, but there are limits on their ability to hear him. From their side of the veil, he appears "mute", "knowing yet unable." The next stanza reassures us that his condition is actually one of joy: "I am now timeless!/All times and in all futures/I am a universe of windows". Although we cannot fully experience this connection now ("I cannot be touched again"), he has faith that we will come to enlightenment someday, too ("I can see you outlined/Looking beyond what you know").
"Unbroken Awareness" stood out among critique submissions for its assured pacing, luminous imagery and wise insights. Clear without over-explaining, it is a good example of poetry that works as both spiritual message and enjoyable lyric.
Where could a poem like "Unbroken Awareness" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Prestigious, competitive awards for poets aged 18+ from a leading UK-based poetry organization; top prize 5,000 pounds; online entries accepted
The Plough Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
Contest to raise funds for UK arts organization offers two prizes of 1,000 pounds for unpublished poems; 2007 judge is UK poet laureate Andrew Motion; enter by mail or online
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Prizes of $100 for prizes for poetry, stories, prose poems, personal essays, humor, and literature for young adults; previously published works accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the October 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Under the Arbor
We came for love
When the light was fleeing
Under the arbor, by a tree.
We sat in silence
On my coat of leather
Under the sky, near the earth
The night was tender
Warm and bright
With you and I, the garden wall.
We came for love
When life was fleeting
Under the arbor, by a tree.
Our ageless day
Yet the inevitable night
Has entwined us forever
With a longing for life.
Copyright 2005 by J.T. Milford
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Under the Arbor" by J.T. Milford, has the timeless quality of an old English ballad. Though not strictly formal verse, the poem develops a song-like cadence through the use of repeated speech patterns and grammatical constructions in each stanza.
The style and theme of "Under the Arbor" reminded me of Lord Byron's "We'll go no more a-roving". What gives these deceptively simple lines so much power? Perhaps it is the immediacy and sincerity of the feelings that the poet shares with us. There is no self-conscious drama, no aesthetic affectation. No matter how many poets and lovers have made the same observations, the ecstasy and the loss are felt afresh by everyone who falls in love.
Similarly, in "Under the Arbor," the scene becomes more poignant for its lack of detail. The lovers are every lover, the arbor is every pastoral scene where the changing light and turning seasons reminded us of life's fragility. This theme comes through in Milford's deft reworking of the first stanza in the fourth: "When the light was fleeing" becomes "When life was fleeting."
The poem uses just the right amount of repetition to create a musical structure without becoming monotonous. The first two lines of stanzas 1-4 have two stressed beats each, but the number and pattern of syllables varies slightly. Lines ending in "silence", "leather" and "tender" relieve the pressure of having each line end on a stressed syllable, which can give a poem a leaden tread. The third line of stanzas 1-4 feels like two shorter lines because it falls into two parallel halves, usually a pair of prepositional phrases. But the poet breaks that pattern slightly in the third stanza, "With you and I, the garden wall," allowing the heart of the poem, "you and I," to stand out more from its context. The three-line structure creates the sensation of two halves joined to form a greater whole in the third line.
I was less enamored of the concluding stanza, which deviated from the pattern of the preceding stanzas without a clear rationale, and lacked their careful pacing. I also felt that the move from physical details (the arbor, the light, the wall) to more abstract images ("ageless day," "longing for life") diminished the impact of the scene. In the first four stanzas, I was seeing through the poet's eyes, whereas in the last stanza, he was telling me what he thought. Sensation is more powerful than second-hand interpretation.
More importantly, I wasn't sure what he was trying to say. The "ageless day" and "inevitable night" appear to contradict one another. These lines could be read as saying that their love made the day seem timeless, yet all along they know night is inevitable. But how has the coming of night "entwined [them] forever/With a longing for life"? Is it that they cling more tightly to each other because they know that the passage of time brings loss? If the point is that they are united forever by love, the last line pulls the reader in a different direction: are they longing for life, or each other?
My suggested rewrite below flows more naturally from the preceding stanzas, while preserving most of the images and clarifying the main idea:
We longed for life
Though night descended
Entwined forever, in ageless day.
The last line could bear a double meaning. The lovers' bond makes day out of night, and night and day are also entwined, just as the lovers' ecstasy is always intermingled with awareness of mortality.
Where could this poem be submitted? These upcoming contests came to mind:
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
http://www.firstwriter.com/competitions/poetry_competition.shtml
Top prize of 500 pounds plus a free subscription to this useful resource site for writers. Submit online only
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Understanding Modern English-Language Haiku
By Tracy Koretsky
This month, in a special edition of Critique Corner, we've invited five editors from top online haiku and related-form publications to demonstrate the revision process they used to arrive at these poems:
flies explore
the newly painted sign
fish market
—Jane Reichhold, editor of Lynx
cold night
the dashboard lights
of another car
—John Stevenson, editor of The Heron's Nest
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as fear
—George Swede, editor of Frogpond
dune wind—
the blackened seed pods
of a bush lupine
—Linda Papanicolaou, editor of Haigaonline
blue sky
before me
beyond me
—Colin Stewart Jones, editor of Notes from the Gean
Copyright in these poems is reserved to their authors. George Swede's poem was first published in Acorn #24.
Like it or not, American poetry is factionalized. Academic poets snub gesturing street poets; language poets bar-brawl with new formalists. It's the kind of passionate squabble that, at the very least, proves the vitality of the source from which all these tributaries flow. Yet, with rare exception, haiku, the most practiced form of literature in the world, is segregated, as if in a lake of its own. Ask an American poet what a haiku is and you are likely to be told that it is a three-line form with 5, 7, and 5 syllables per line, and that it contains a nature image. Neither is true.
This is unsettling given the seminal relationship of haiku to American poetry. In the early twentieth century, a time when American arts of all types were struggling to distinguish themselves from European conventions, there was a concurrent interest in all things Oriental—an interest shared by Ezra Pound, the intellectual center of the first truly American movement of poets, the Imagists. Through them, haiku—or rather, what Pound and his circle misapprehended to be haiku—came to provide the formal tenets (though not the subject) of modernism.
Half a century later, during America's next significant cultural revolution, poets would once again misapprehend haiku, this time as philosophical fuel for those poets known as the Beats. Pound misunderstood the two parts of a haiku, believing they were meant merely to describe one another rather than to resonate. He even called his experiments with the form "equations". As for the Beats, they thought their subject entirely Zen, which, in reality, is a small subset of haiku. Now, not all misunderstandings—especially among poets—are bad. Something new and fresh arose from these accidents, something still easily evident in American poetry today.
Just to parse haiku and understand its mechanisms can provide keys to reading American poetry with greater sophistication, which in turn matures our craft. Through haiku, a poet can begin to comprehend contemporary poetry's disjunctivity—its leaps in logic and argument, and the space it must leave for the reader's participation. In terms of craft, it can help teach where to cut lines and how to work across stanzas.
But beware, despite its brevity and seeming transparency of diction, there is nothing simple about haiku. It is a deep and highly nuanced genre with sensibilities that can take years to comprehend. That is why this primer attempts to introduce only how to read haiku—not necessarily to write it.
To begin, then, let us turn to some of the genre's best magazines. In 2004 I conducted a poll of 22 such publications, discovering that none of them—that's right, none—sought poems with lines of 5/7/5 syllables. To oversimplify, Japanese and English sound units are not easily comparable. As a result, it is rare to find a poem as long as seventeen syllables in today's English-language haiku, and the way those syllables are arrayed varies widely.
As you go through the demonstrations our kind guests have donated, take note of the syllables and the way they are distributed across the lines.
How to do so most effectively will be the topic addressed by our first guest, Jane Reichhold, a renowned teacher of haiku. In addition to these superbly lucid primer pages from her excellent book Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide, Reichhold provides a free peer-critique website for the benefit of the world community of English-language haiku writers: the popular and lively AHA Poetry Forum.
Yet, have a look at Lynx, the magazine Ms. Reichhold edits with her husband Werner, and you might not see any stand-alone three-line poems. What's going on? Well, there is a whole universe of material that shares the essential qualities one finds in haiku; material not far, in some aspects, from Western poetry, but possessing a somewhat different logic. There is inspiration to be found there, but you have to know how to interpret these poems first.
To help us do so, Ms. Reichhold begins:
"Haiku is a genre of form poetry meaning that the form has a definite form. Though we non-Japanese do not count syllables, I do strongly believe that we should maintain the shape of haiku with short, long, short lines. Take:
fish market
the flies explore
the newly painted sign
and notice what happens by simply rearranging the lines:
flies explore
the newly painted sign
fish market
First of all, we eliminate an article (the)—always a plus when trying to be succinct. Secondly, all haiku writers search for interesting first lines that grab the reader's interest. 'Flies explore' opens up an activity—stronger than if on a place—'fish market'. Thirdly, since this haiku uses the riddle technique, the author should set up the riddle with the first two lines, then give the 'answer' in the third. As the haiku is originally expressed, the 'answer' is given away in the first line.
I created this poem for this demonstration, but often the original version is the way the author experienced the poem: being in a fish market, then noticing more flies are crawling on the sign than on the fish. In the revision the poem is expressing a situation: "flies are crawling on a sign—why?" The answer comes in the end "because this is a fish market!" —the AHA moment of the poem."
That "aha" moment one hears so much about in haiku circles basically has to do with allowing the reader to make the connection for him- or herself. Haiku demands an active reader.
In fact, our second guest, John Stevenson, editor of the venerable publication The Heron's Nest, ties this to the form's origins: "Haiku itself comes from an earlier form of poetry known as renku—a collaboration in which two or more poets contribute verses."
So you see, haiku began as something of a game—or at least a participatory improvisation requiring the total involvement of the poets. But like games or musical improvisations, there are some rules, and one is that the opening verse, from which the form we know as haiku derives, contain a seasonal reference.
Note that this is slightly different from the common Western understanding that haiku is about nature. A seasonal reference is not only about nature, but about nature within time.
Mr. Stevenson expands on this: "The reference can be a single word or a phrase. Some of the most frequently used are snow, cherry blossoms, and fireflies, denoting winter, spring, and summer respectively." Take some time with some issues of The Heron's Nest for a sense of how haiku poets make seasonal references. While there, notice how they operate with the rest of the poem.
To show how such references function expressively, Mr. Stevenson offers us this:
overnight travel
the dashboard lights
of another car
"This may have evoked a haiku mood for some readers, but the application of a traditional seasonal reference can offer powerful associations. Since one has so few words to work with in a haiku, it's important that each carry its weight. Why not avail myself of the additional resonance of a late autumn seasonal reference suggesting the imminence of winter—especially when it expresses part of what I am feeling:
cold night
the dashboard lights
of another car
Since I have said no more in the poem itself, I will say no more now about the particular associations this adds to the poem. But perhaps you will agree that an additional element has been introduced and that it broadens the implications of the poem. Not to be overlooked are the implications of the fact that I have identified with other poets through the act of using a traditional season reference."
This sense of referring to, and thereby resonating with, centuries of poets who have used the same or similar seasonal references is often cherished by people who love the form. It is the principal way to access emotion in these poems.
The concept of resonance is perhaps the most difficult for Western readers to understand. We tend to make Ezra Pound's error and read the second part of a haiku as an expansion upon the first, as if there were a colon between the two parts. Rather, the intention of the combination is to create a sort of chord—the relationship may be subtle or oblique or witty or stark or joyous; the relationship is literally the crux of the form. To read haiku means to make the connection.
People who write haiku in English generally use the term "juxtaposition" to describe this, and it is never easy. "A successful juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated things leads readers to a moment of awe and wonder; an unsuccessful one leaves readers disinterested, even irked," says our next guest, George Swede, editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America.
"Across the centuries, writers have over-used some pairings, so that rather than being unexpected, they have become familiar: blossoms/spring, rose/woman, rain/tears, night/monsters, and so on. Any poet who employs such established associations must find a fresh way or risk boring the audience. To avoid this, the poet can always opt to unite two things no one has yet considered as possibly belonging together. But, an unusual combination risks that readers will find the pairing incompatible."
Mr. Swede shows us how he struggled to make choices in this poem, the final version of which is forthcoming in the haiku magazine, Acorn:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as a massage table
"The two main elements were the deep chasm and the massage table; snorkeling provided the context or linking mechanism. My reasoning was that snorkeling involves the same posture as getting a massage—lying prone. The reader was supposed to connect the chasm in the ocean floor with the idea that a massage table can also lead to deep experiences, sometimes painful or exhilarating.
Looking at the poem again, I found the connection too far-fetched. I had to find something more meaningful than a massage table:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as feeling
This change didn't work either, but for a different reason: 'feeling' was too vague. So, I recalled what emotion dominated my adventure snorkeling:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as fear
At last the two chief parts were linked in a way that made sense, but the poem no longer possessed what I had originally sought: two entities never before juxtaposed. Instead, I had brought together two oft-associated things, chasm and fear. I can only hope that readers will find snorkeling to be a context novel enough for them to experience the haiku as unique."
Notice in each of these examples how the third line operates. In Jane Reichhold's poem, it answers a riddle, in John Stevenson's, it subverts our expectation—the intimate light does not originate in the poet's own car. As for George Swede's, we expect something tangible, concrete; what we get is anything but. Appreciating these small surprises yields much of the delight of the genre.
Why "genre" and not "form?" Sample the online contents of Frogpond, the publication Mr. Swede edits, and you will discover other types of work within the haiku family. To learn what these poems are and how to read them, Mr. Swede suggests the definitions of the Haiku Society of America, the parent organization of his publication.
What they have in common is that a resonant juxtaposition is relevant in all of them. This is the quality shared by the daring work on the pages of Lynx. It is true also of haiga, the exciting visual collage form, in which a haiku is paired with an image.
"There is an openness in the relationship—a 'link/shift' relationship to each other," says Haigaonline editor, Linda Papanicolaou. "Images are not coupled with captions or explanations that tell us what we're seeing in the photo. The haiku may, in fact, be about what's in the image, but amplify or complement it, say, with sound, smell, or other imagery beyond the pictorial. Or, it may be about something else completely, linking to the image through comparison, mood, etc. A good haiga suggests rather than tells; this allows the reader to enter the work as aesthetic experience."
To see what she means, click through an issue of Haigaonline. You will find there everything from ink brush painting, simplified in style, with a haiku written in calligraphy on an empty section of the paper, to Western-style drawing and painting, collage, digital imaging, photography, etc. Doing this may be the fastest way to comprehend the range of sensibilities current in contemporary English-language haiku poetry.
Ms. Papanicolaou, for example, studies and often tries to emulate traditional haiku. She demonstrates:
"I wanted to write a type of haiku called 'shasei'—a sketch. It was early October, I was in some dunes in California, and the wildflowers were past their peak. I jotted:
blackened seed pods of lupine
on my pad.
Often in traditional haiku, the first line is a season word fragment, but mine already had its season—blackened, dry seedpods occur in late autumn. I felt they brought to the poem the Japanese aesthetic of impermanence and loss. So what I still needed was an image that established setting, or complemented and deepened the phrase:
dune wind
evokes harshness and brings in sound as well as the tactile sting of blowing sand.
blackened seed pods
of a lupine
needed something—more specificity, perhaps—so that the phrase didn't just end with a third line that just completed line two without bringing something of its own. The original plant was what's called 'beach lupine', a small, blue-flowering mounding plant. But a taller, more robust yellow-flowered lupine called "bush lupine" is also native.
dune wind—
the blackened seed pods
of a bush lupine
I liked the sound; plus, 'beach' lupine with 'dune' was redundant—closed. The larger, showier species, with its sense of resilience, seemed the right way to end the poem."
Toward the other end of the spectrum of haiku sensibility is Colin Stewart Jones, editor of Notes from the Gean, who uses his "sketch" to somewhat different ends:
"To choose to record an event in haiku form is a subjective act and one has, therefore, given the event meaning. So I tend to record my initial reaction to a set of circumstances and then work on the composition later. I use the word 'compose' deliberately. For example, I remember first taking a note of the scene:
the expanse of summer sky ahead of and behind me
I then started thinking about how the sky was also above me, so I jotted down:
over my head
This started me thinking about how the sky was beyond my understanding, which led me to other philosophical questions and my emotional responses to them. I felt like I was young again, looking up at the sky in wonderment for the first time. This would become the essence of the haiku I would try to write.
Often, when I try to write my thoughts as a haiku, it just doesn't work. I had:
summer sky—
the expanse of blue
ahead of me
summer sky—
the expanse of blue
all around me
I thought of synonyms for 'ahead' and 'behind,' and came up with 'before' and 'beyond.' These would better suit the philosophical questions I had posed as they had more depth of meaning. To finish the haiku, I simply pruned and arranged these elements:
summer sky
expanse of blue
before me
beyond me
I wanted not just to set a scene, but to pose an existential question then supply an answer of sorts. Thus I arrived at my arrangement.
I decided to drop the obvious seasonal reference 'summer sky' for 'blue sky' which I felt was more universal yet still gave a strong sense of summer. I deliberately chose no punctuation so the poem could be read in multiple ways.
blue sky
before me
beyond me
The consonance of the B sounds was serendipitous but, with the monorhyme of 'me' on the end of lines 2 and 3, added a dimension to the poem, highlighting man's eternal search for understanding."
Mr. Jones explains the somewhat cryptic name of his publication this way: "A Gean tree is a wild cherry which, though not as showy as the formal Japanese variety, is nevertheless still rooted in the same ground and will produce fruit." In Notes from the Gean, readers will encounter one-line poems, and poems on subjects not usually associated with haiku. "There are many poets whose work I admire," says Jones, "but I still feel the haiku community could do with some radical new writers."
His publication features them from every place in the world where English is spoken, and sometimes where it's not; its masthead reflects this. "I first 'met' the original editors of Notes from the Gean on an Internet discussion forum," he said—a forum very much like the spirited community Ms. Reichhold hosts. "There," he continued, "as I developed as a writer and started to submit my poems for publication, I began to encounter the work of, and form relationships and even friendships with, other poets."
Which is what I, along with all the hard-working editors who generously donated their time to this piece, would like to invite you to do. It's a great way to begin a practice that will allow you to be highly creative with words and images for free every single day if you like. Listen well and patiently, and you will strengthen your ability to read and write poetry—both Eastern and Western—that surprises and delights.
This essay appeared in the April 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Unforgotten
By Dean Kostos
A child steps from a silhouette of fire,
pleating paper into egrets of flame.
Tattooed with smoke, his selves a duet,
he grows into a statuette of flame.
He releases the singed kites & birds,
attempting to forget the flames
that cleansed nothing but branded
loss: fleshy rosettes of flame.
He breathes into tarnished mirrors,
coaxing embers from regret's flames.
Voices splinter like lightning, igniting
words' clatter: castanets of flame.
Dean pleats his ashes into a boy
who emerges, forever bearing the debt of flame.
Union Songs
This Australian website has collected over 600 labor union and political protest songs, from classics like "Bread and Roses" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to contemporary offerings such as "After We Torture Our Prisoners". A number of the songs are accompanied by audio recordings. An extensive links directory provides information on other working-class music and cultural sites.
United States Copyright Office
Find out how to register your work. Copyright search engine is easy to use. Note that mailed submissions to the Copyright Office may be severely delayed. Use a private carrier like FedEx or UPS instead.
University of Arizona Poetry Center
The website of the University of Arizona Poetry Center features reference materials such as a digitized collection of writers' portrait photos, a blog with articles and interviews about poetry and education, and a basic guide to the poetry publication process.
University of Toronto’s Glossary of Poetic Terms
Brief definitions of poetic forms and literary devices from Acatalectic to Zeugma.
UnLost: A Journal of Found Poetry
UnLost features poetry and artwork made by transformation, erasure, or collage of other texts and images. Unpublished work is preferred.
Unmonstrous
By John Allen Taylor. Bold, tender poetry chapbook depicts a Southern childhood marked by sexual abuse from his Sunday school teacher, and the grace and gratitude he finds in reclaiming his body as part of the natural world.
Unraveling at the Name
Speaking in sonnets seems as natural as breathing for this author, whose effortless mastery of poetic forms is employed to tell the story of a young woman's discovery of her lesbian identity. Some explicit passages.
Unruly Bodies
Best-selling essayist and novelist Roxane Gay, author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, curated this pop-up online journal in April 2018, featuring 24 contemporary writers' reflections on embodiment and how it is policed by society. Contributors include Kaveh Akbar, S. Bear Bergman, Kiese Laymon, and Carmen Maria Machado.
Until We Meet Again
By Richard Eric Johnson
Barriers in place
go no further
people cars trains
stuck in time
coiled razor wire glow
bad present
faces tense
eyes perplexed
anger multitudes frustration
shout deafened ears
cold heart finger tips
trigger-touch guns
silent wet eyes
lips blow kisses
across The Wall
Untitled (“mother’s now…”)
mother's now
translucent glowing
coldly by this aging
winter sun
autumnal under
a puzzled cloud
forgetful of both
time and place
her hand cold
as fresh chicken
Copyright 2009 by Hugh Hodge
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
As I begin my tenure as poetry critic here at Winning Writers, I find myself looking towards the future. That is why, of all the many beautiful and intriguing poems that arrived in my mailbox, I picked this SMS text poem by South African poet Hugh Hodge.
You may ask, "What is an SMS poem?" and, perhaps querulously, "Um...why?" I'll admit I did.
SMS, just to make sure we're all on the same page—or, er, screen—means "short message service"—what most people simply call "texting," that apparently all-absorbing and reportedly thumb-nerve numbing activity that has people all over the world hunched over their cells and squinting.
Although the technology was developed in the early 1990s, implementation was slow. But by the year 2000 there were 17 billion SMS texts (yes, that's a "b"). One year later that number was 250 billion, and the millennium was born.
By 2005 the number of SMS transmissions overtopped the trillion mark. And as you might imagine, with all that communicating going on, it wasn't long before poets joined the party.
Enter "cell phone poetry", or "SMS poetry", or the like, into a search engine and you will discover sites offering "funny" or "sexy" examples, many of which you are free to copy. Far and away, most listings are for seduction poems, small offerings to send last night's date. This is comforting. Apparently, the "function" of poetry, as the Marxist critics would say, has not changed much since the early work of John Donne.
But even if the message hasn't much changed, clearly the medium has, begetting orthographic innovations sometimes called "textese" or "slanguage"—abbreviations slashed almost beyond recognition or symbols substituting for letters, such as m8 representing the word "mate". Though oft decried, these devices are lent a degree of legitimacy, indeed gravitas, by world-renowned Cambridge linguist David Crystal in Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 (Oxford University Press, 2008), to which this essay is greatly indebted.
According to Crystal, the first competition for text poetry was offered only two or three years after the arrival of texting by The Guardian, which claims to be the world's leading liberal newspaper. Early adopters though these liberals may be, note that, despite the distinguished panel of judges, the contest and its results are relegated to the technology pages.
Still, the games had begun. A second and more lucrative prize from The Guardian soon followed, then a sister city project between Antwerp and Leeds, a Tasmanian prize, a Filipino one, fourteen from the British forum, txt2nite.com, even a new Dutch literary foundation dedicating to awarding De Gouden Duim (The Golden Thumb)!
All right then, let's play! But what makes an award-winning text poem? Well, obviously, like any text message, it must contain no more than 160 characters. Beyond that, the judges from that original Guardian competition offer some insights; among them, the suspense created when one can only read a single line at a time, and the necessity of an unequivocal opening. As in all poetry competitions, judges enjoy a fresh approach or subject. Nevertheless, I wonder if some of the salient characteristics specific to this new type of poem may have been missed in their commentary—notably, the impossibility of stanzification. Also, wouldn't such a poem, by its nature, be epistolary?
This month's poet, Hugh Hodge, who, as a computer programmer and editor of South Africa's oldest literary journal, New Contrast, is no stranger to either technology or poetry, found himself in such insufficiently charted territory that he felt the need to include his own rules (no textese, message must be sent) and explanation along with his poem.
What is immediately striking about his poem is its subject matter. It is not about dating, not humorous, nor self-referentially about texting itself—none of the cliché SMS topics.
Less fortunately though, the poem opens with some difficult syntax. Follow me here: if the "mother's now translucent glowing" is a compound noun as suggested by the possessive, then it is the "glowing" which is cold. If, more probably, the noun is intended to be "mother", then the meaning is either "mother (is) now translucent (comma) glowing" or "mother (is) now translucent(ly) glowing." Or perhaps the noun is "now" and "mother" is an adjective modifying it.
This may appear nit-picky, but confusing syntax at the beginning of a poem can be off-putting. The reader cannot enter properly. And when the reader is a competition judge with a large stack to get through, your poem may not get the patient response you desire.
My favorite lines are 4-6. I like especially the juxtaposition of winter sun/autumnal. Is it winter or autumn? If it is winter, then aren't we done with autumn? Wait, I'm confused about time here, which is, of course, the point. The reader participates in this confusion. Furthermore notice how each word has an "n" and the "u" and "l" sounds both unify the phrase and propel it forward to the next line, creating a full movement from sun to cloud. Additionally, there is the personification of "cloud" serving double-duty as a metaphor for mother.
Lines 7 and 8, in comparison, are uninspired. They are also explanatory. Mom's confused about time; we've got that. The participation we enjoyed as readers is undercut when prosaically summed by the author. I recommend the lines be struck.
What really makes the poem successful for me are the final two lines which move the poem to an unexpected place with their disquieting image. The chicken may be fresh, but it's dead. And actually, if it were recently dead, it wouldn't be cold. This image is not merely unappealing, but troubling, because it is something as dear as mother's hand.
However, it is not only that final image that leaves me troubled. There is the question of what my response might have been had the poet not informed me of his medium. How does contextualizing a piece affect that piece? Remember, Marcel Duchamp's urinal would have been merely that, had he not signed it. Translations, arcania, invented forms, or resurrected ones require context, but when does context become gimmick?
And when does the need for context disappear? Will we ever recognize an SMS poem as readily as we do a sonnet? Some industry experts predict the volume of SMS messages to be 2.4 trillion by 2010. According to Julie Bloss Kelsey, "twitterzines", like the recently inaugurated Thaumatrope, are avidly seeking—and paying for—160-character fiction and poetry.
On the other hand, other analysts predict texting will be a short-lived trend, with video messaging soon to replace it. So perhaps we'd best get our thumbs working.
Where could a poem like "mother's now..." be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
PANK Magazine's 1,001 Awesome Words Contest
Entries must be received by September 30
Edgy, contemporary literary journal offers at least $200 for creative writing (one prize across all genres), up to 1,001 words; top prize amount is partly contingent on fees received, ranging between $200 and $750
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
UK-based writers' resource site offers prizes up to 500 pounds for poems up to 30 lines (published or unpublished); enter online only
Abilene Writers Guild Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 30 (don't enter before October 1)
Texas literary society offers prizes up to $100 in a number of genres including rhymed and unrhymed poetry, short stories, articles, children's literature, and novel excerpts
In addition, here are two sites that specialize in SMS poetry:
Copyblogger
This copywriters' and bloggers' advice site offers occasional prizes of iPods and gift cards
txt2nite
Online forum collects funny and poetic text messages
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Up from the Root Cellar
The root vegetable, as metaphor for the unearthing of secrets and the renewal of aging bodies, unifies this satisfying chapbook from Cervena Barva Press. In Woodworth's inventive poems, nuns peeling potatoes could be fantasizing about Marilyn Monroe's striptease; a woman puzzled by hints of her father's infidelity might try to call her childhood home by speaking into a rose shaped like an antique telephone.
US Font Map: The United Fonts of America
This entertaining article at The Statesider shows a map of 222 typographical fonts named after US locations, some with quirky stories behind them. (For instance, Georgia, one of the more common fonts used today, got its name from a tabloid headline that read "Alien Heads Found in Georgia"!)
US Legal Forms
Clearinghouse for over 36,000 legal forms that are free or available for purchase online. Includes state-specific forms. Writers will appreciate the templates for contracts, rights assignments and intellectual property filings.
V.A.
By Terry Severhill
Very aggravating
Sitting here at 2 North,
V.A. Regional Medical Center, La Jolla
Waiting—
God, how many hours, weeks, years
Have I spent waiting on a reluctant
Government?
Signs—
Signs all around—
"Depression"—
Well yes it is—
This whole fucking place is.
"Cognitive Mood Disorder Clinic"
Huh? That sign pisses me off for some reason.
"Psychiatry Emergency Clinic"—
Why don't they just say—
"This place is for all you pissed off
Rage filled, bummed out assholes"
but that would just be another sign.
Under the sign
"Depression"
They list 9 signs.
I have 7.
I'm so depressed by the revelation.
I got here early—
That must be a sign of something.
I wasn't the first. Just a kicked-backed black dude about my age—
A regular—the doctors and staff know him by name.
More "clients/patients" trickle in—
A couple look like WW II vets.
Only one looks under thirty.
I'm nervous—
I'm nuts—
I'm just a "little" crazy.
Ha. Ha.
Why else would I be in 2 North?
(2 North is a walk in psychiatric clinic, 2 South is the lockdown ward)
Valancourt Books
Founded in 2005 by partners James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle, Valancourt Books is an independent small press dedicated to the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction. They specialize in gay titles, Gothic and horror novels, and literary fiction.
VCU Medical Literary Messenger
VCU Medical Literary Messenger is Virginia Commonwealth University's twice-yearly online journal of creative writing about medical themes. The journal aims to promote humanism and the healing arts through prose, poetry, and photography.
Versal
Visit their blog for the editors' thoughts about their submission review process and the wide(ning) aesthetic that Versal seeks out. Contributors have included Peter Shippy, Jennifer Chapis, and Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.
Verse Daily
Similar to Poetry Daily. Visit for a new free poem each day. Verse Daily selects from review copies of literary magazines and books. Web Monthly page links to poems on the Internet. Both famous and lesser-known poets are represented. Publishers, send review copies here.
Verses Scribbl’d in My Burning House
By Katherine J. Leisering
While reviewing 17th c. surveyor map holdings, Massachusetts librarian Emma Loade discovered this first draft of Anne Bradstreet's "Upon the Burning of Our House". Footnotes are Miss Loade's.
Asleep was I, to dream of love
When three floors below to me above
Rose cries of, "Fire! Fire! my dear!
Get thy derriere outta here!"
Before I flew, toward door as dart,
My pen grabbed I close to my heart,
And put to scorch'd paper few brief verses,
In between some well placed curses.
Thought I, nightie now well heated,
"The hell with poems!" I'd become unseated.
Rising swiftly pray'd I to God,
"Please! Spare for me my bod!
And allow me like, you know, to step
Outside real quick and call a Geico rep."
We are covered well 'tis sure
For occasions ill, e'en backed up sew'r.
And should no payment come or stall late,
I shall but compare costs with Allstate.[1]
How didst such flames begin a-firing?
Was it ubiquitous faulty wiring?
Or mayhap pyromaniac parson[2]
Who lately'd been accused of arson?
My goods turned to ashes thus
Will ne'er make me Gloomy Gus.[3]
Though friends they may become aloof
Refusing meals if there's no roof.
Then shall we simply move up windward
To summer digs on Martha's Vineyard.
________________________________
[1] I, too, have Allstate.
[2] Parson Thurgood Mulch racked up a record thirty-three trips to the neck pillory in 1652 for setting trash can fires all over Plymouth.
[3] "Gloomy" Gus Standish (Miles' nephew) briefly dated Anne Bradstreet before tragically choking on a Thanksgiving turkey bone and succumbing in the arms of an Indian.
Vestal Review
Vestal Review pays 3-10 cents per word for accepted stories. Submissions should be 500 words maximum and have a plot.
Vetch
Launched in 2015, Vetch is an online literary journal of poetry by transgender authors. Essays and book reviews should take the poetry of trans authors as their subject. It was founded by the poet Liam O'Brien and is edited by writers from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Editors say: "Vetch seeks work by trans poets in trans language. This is not to say that trans people have a single way of speaking to one another, nor that trans language is by necessity revolutionary, but that we seek work that does not bother to translate itself for a cis reader. Vetch seeks work attentive to the ways in which power shapes language, poetry, and relations among trans people. Vetch seeks work excited by imagining a trans poetics, rather than dogmatic about establishing one." See website for email submission guidelines.
Veterans History Project
Library of Congress site collects personal reminiscences from veterans of recent wars. Search archives by time period or branch of service, or find out how you can add your own memories to the historical record.
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts
Award-winning poets Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu founded this online community in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding women's work as well as the critical reception of women's creative writing in our current culture. Formerly known as WILLA: Women in Letters and Literary Arts.
Vietnamese Reds
A string of red paper lanterns cast harsh shadows
upon a pagoda of silken Bodhisattvas, snapping
pleats of paper like peacock tails for American GI's.
Their celadon features light opium pipes, pouring
flowery rice wines; while pregnancies out of wedlock
are punished by lying in the street as elephants trod
on stomachs until garments are the color of cay-cay.
Still, born of this night are offenses more colorful
as the essence of jackfruit and pungent curries
stain winds. A river bleeds like a long cut, split open
by the evils of Reds and Capitalists alike. Junks
carry small explosions of orange as black clouds lift
from woks and grenades. Nearby a curious red rain
falls on banana leaves, where a child has followed
a scuttling blue crab over a landmine. Beyond
Saigon, a field of casualties lay splayed in the wake
of "conflict" resembling war. Their vampire smiles
appear to be stained with betel nut, but not.
Burlap bags swollen with shrapnel, bleed rice.
Jasmine and napalm float upon the moist dark:
marriage of dove and vulture. A people governed
by fate question virtues, as Confucius scratches
his head. A staccato beat sounds for the dead
from a drum said to be stretched with human skin.
Cay cay: a fruit similar to a persimmon that produces a dark pink juice that is used as a cosmetic and a paint and sealer for paper fans.
Copyright 2004 by S.K. Duff
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Vietnamese Reds" by S.K. Duff, surrounds us with a world of brutal illusions, where beauty and cruelty intertwine like the blossoms and dragons on a Chinese urn. The finely observed details create an atmosphere that is almost oppressively real, a feat that helps compensate for the lack of narrative development.
This is a poem of disguises and shape-shifting, where grains of rice can be mistaken for shrapnel, and woks and grenades give off identical smoke. The clash between the ancient Vietnamese civilization and modern American warfare adds yet another layer of disharmony between appearance and reality. Duff subtly suggests that the war itself is enabled by deception, as when politicians refuse to call things by their real names: "[A] field of casualties lay splayed in the wake/of 'conflict' resembling war."
The poem demands close attention in order to comprehend what is being described. It's easy to be dazzled by the sensory profusion and fail to spot the deadly reality beneath. It would be nice to deceive ourselves that the bodies' lips are red with betel nut, a sensory indulgence, "but not." Duff is a master of restraint. My favorite example of chilling understatement:
...Nearby a curious red rain
falls on banana leaves, where a child has followed
a scuttling blue crab over a landmine.
Death is everywhere in this poem, but rarely named outright. Even the execution of pregnant girls is masked with the pleasing, impersonal image of decorative dyes.
Poets who aspire to tackle emotionally charged topics could learn subtlety from "Vietnamese Reds". The author refrains from unnecessary editorializing and trusts his readers to have the appropriate response to the scenes laid out before them.
Yet one drawback of the poem's journalistic detachment, in my view, is a certain emotional coolness. The very title suggests an abstract composition, rather than a human drama. While I'm glad Duff refrained from telling us how to feel, as so many poems about atrocities do, I wasn't sure what the details added up to. The poem is structured as a realistic narrative, but it didn't seem to move forward toward a dramatic resolution. The final image of a drum "stretched with human skin" is one more addition to a catalogue of horrors, rather than a clue to making sense of the whole picture. The poem stops, but doesn't really end.
The closest we come to closure is "A people governed/by fate question virtues, as Confucius scratches/his head." This intriguing yet enigmatic statement left me wanting to know more about how it applied to the specific scenes of the poem.
Is the oppressive fate in question the traditional Vietnamese culture, with its harsh punishment of sexual misconduct, or the modern-day "evils of Reds and Capitalists"? Or is the point that modernity has just substituted one inhuman system for another, rather than bringing individual freedom?
Since there are no characters in the poem—the human figures are either inferred from the physical objects they create, or dead and reduced to objects themselves—the notion of a choice between virtuous and amoral action is hard to read back into the preceding stanzas. Perhaps the author is saying that we commit atrocities when we allow ourselves to depersonalize our actions, to act as if "fate" and not human choices ordered those women to be trampled and those soldiers to be shot.
I also found the first two stanzas to lack a strong poetic rhythm, which made them feel overly wordy. The following is a powerful image, but it seems to be struggling to stand out from a jumble of sounds:
...while pregnancies out of wedlock
are punished by lying in the street as elephants trod
on stomachs until garments are the color of cay-cay.
However, by the third stanza, the rhythm tightens up. The line breaks feel more inevitable, matching the flow of the concepts. This image in particular had all the elegant economy of an Asian brushstroke painting:
Jasmine and napalm float upon the moist dark:
marriage of dove and vulture.
The latter line reminded me of the cryptic, metaphorical names given to martial arts poses, or sections of the I Ching.
Where could a poem like "Vietnamese Reds" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Columbia Journal Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: March 1
A prestigious magazine published by New York's Columbia University.
Foley Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by April 16
Sponsored by America, a Jesuit magazine, yet this contest favors works with a more subtle philosophical/spiritual component, rather than explicitly religious verse.
Pablo Neruda Prize
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Sponsored by Nimrod International Journal, this is one of the most prestigious contests for individual poems. Intense, image-filled work may find a home here.
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Vigil for Darfur
This moving poem by 17-year-old Sabina Carlson supports Amnesty International's campaign for diplomatic and humanitarian aid to stop the genocidal civil war in Sudan's Darfur region. Visit their website to find out how you can help.
Virtual Literary Events Calendar at the Washington Post
Launched in May 2020, this calendar curated by the books editors at the Washington Post lists online literary events from publishers, authors, libraries, festivals, and bookstores around America.
Vispo: Langu(im)age
Vispo, or visual poetry, is an art form that explores the visual patterns of written language, with an emphasis on appearance over meaning. This site showcases examples of vispo in images, videos, and even a computer game ("Arteroids" by Jim Andrews) where players shoot text fragments with other texts.
VistaPrint
Design your own postcards, greeting cards, business cards, flyers, stationery and promotional materials. Use VistaPrint's templates or upload your own artwork.
Visual Thesaurus
Each word you enter links to other words in a fascinating, shifting web. Great brainstorming tool.
Vitality
Vitality is an online literary journal for poetry, fiction, essays, and artwork with LGBTQ protagonists. Submissions accepted year-round. This is a paying market. They are especially interested in genre fiction with an adventure storyline (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, thriller, steampunk, comedy, travel, historical fiction) and characters who are nonbinary in their gender identity and sexual attraction. No homophobic slurs or bullying, even by villains; explicit sex; or "tragic queers" (LGBTQ characters dying). Read the full list of the editors' likes and dislikes here.
Voyage: A Young Adult Literary Journal
Launched in 2020, Voyage is an online literary journal dedicated to young adult literature. They publish new essays and stories weekly, and also host a first chapter contest with a cash prize and literary agent review.
Waiting for Pentecost
By Nancy Craig Zarzar. Winner of the 2007 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest, this poetry collection depicts intimate relationships cleaved by silences, frustrated by communication barriers both psychological and inter-cultural, but capable of being healed by empathy. Divine grace helps some of these characters find the willingness to enter into another’s strange mental world, like the husband who alone appreciates the creative visions of his stigmatized, mentally ill wife. Others remain on the opposite side of the barrier, perhaps because their intentions were not as pure, like the male narrator who is intrigued by his hairdresser’s quiet daughter.
Waiting to Burn
Memorable chapbook whose poems are always about so much more than their literal subject matter. Cleland trusts her readers to recognize the story of an unhappy marriage in a cat's transformation into a dog, or the divine-human power struggle over forbidden knowledge in a guided tour of a factory. This book was one of the three winners of the 2006 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Competition. Their book design and materials are above-average.
Wake Up Call
By David R. Altman
A gold-eyed predator races through the low limbs,
her kill window only six minutes, just before first light.
Like a Vampire of the Woods,
she must return to her hidden roost before sunrise.
Gliding silently, she sees the unsuspecting cat
curled upon the deck post, its hearing long gone and
senses dulled with age,
now the target of a racing drone, whose radar is locked on.
It strikes quickly; the cat, never to awaken, is suddenly lifted upward,
leaving one family to feed another, creating memories of its ninth life,
now flown like a grocery sack to an unlikely final resting place
high among the branches, far from the deck post
where her kitten sleeps undisturbed,
a lofty sacrifice that will never be confirmed.
Walking Backward
By Diana Anhalt
Late each night, woozy with sleep, my bare feet
traveled blind—knew one room from the next
through warps in the wood, space between
floorboards. Sensed their width and breadth...
For forty years I called that place home.
It still resides in me. The feet are last to follow.
They fumble with the unfamiliar, reject the waxed
surface of a new life, are the last to forgive
my leaving, long to return me to the old home—
unwashed windows, lopsided gate, caged parrots
in the kitchen, geraniums. At night my feet step
back, tread dream halls where faces linger
in mirrors, Spanish echoes down corridors
into a past I left behind. And there you are,
waiting in the entrance. You lean
against the door frame, ask: Como te fue?
How did it go? Red wine or white?
Walt Whitman
This scholarly archive includes complete text of Leaves of Grass plus biographical materials and literary criticism.
War Poetry by David Ray
Mr. Ray was one of the founders of American Writers Against the Vietnam War in 1966. Recent books include 'The Death of Sardanapalus: and Other Poems of the Iraq Wars' and 'One Thousand Years: Poems about the Holocaust'.
War Poets (Wikipedia)
Brief overview of the emergence and development of the contemporary war poetry genre, with links to information on major poets of World Wars I and II.
War Poets Association
The War Poets Association promotes interest in the work, life and historical context of poets whose subject is the experience of war, with particular interest in World Wars I and II, the Spanish Civil War, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Their website posts announcements of new publications in this field, calls for papers, and literary events (mostly in London).
War, Literature & the Arts
Handsome literary journal published by the English Department at the US Air Force Academy. Features writing by well-known authors such as Philip Caputo, Andre Dubus and Carolyn Forche.
Warnings and Cautions
Website dedicated to identifying scams.
Water on Rocks
By Mary Lou Taylor
Oh, you red planet!
Did you once have beings running around,
keeping herds, building shelters, planting?
Once did you have water?
Spirit and Opportunity—they surprised you.
Twin robots hunkering down on opposite flanks,
busy poking at rocks, maneuvering, searching soil,
mining for minerals. They didn't go away.
Spirit hung around five years, then got stuck.
Opportunity soldiers on, a ten-year-old, golf-cart-sized
robot, exploring, working Endeavour Crater, looking
to see if you were once warm and wet.
Opportunity spotted a rock called "Esperance,"
filled with clay minerals. Acid water, undrinkable,
once flowed across it. Hey, Mars, we know you had
a wet past. Today you're cold and dry.
Earth needs to know your history. Let that Opportunist
be a geologist who walks around your surface, uses
a hammer on the inside of a rock, digs in, picks up
dust particles. Mars, get ready for your close-up.
Water Street
By Naila Moreira. This poet and science journalist's second chapbook marries the majesty of High Modernist style with a humble attention to our nonhuman neighbors on the planet. Like Yeats and Eliot, she speaks with prophetic sureness about cosmic themes, but where they might have recoiled from nature's messiness into the cool chambers of intellect, Moreira shows us the fatal consequences of such detachment. She quickens our conscience to protect our fragile environment, then invites us to be awestruck by meteor showers and comforted by the cycle "of being and of killing, of eating and of rot", as our tiny breaths "fuse with the world's bedlam of respiration".
Water, rising.
By Sally Stewart Mohney
for Vinings
Waking in the night to a thunder-full
of dark. Green stage rises as you sleep,
crests a high angry orange. Rushing sluice
groans and juices over moss banks. River feels
coarse grain of pasture grass on its underbelly.
Horses pulled from half-graze. Neighbors in
sudden red kayaks witness mattresses, chairs
and sofas tossed in a slow, painful ballet. Stormwater
mud-gullies into your street belly-level. Like watershed
creatures, you find alternate egress. Folks collect in pluff
mud at tide's edge to watch churn boil: dam of net,
leaves, rope. Warped door. Pool toys. Hopeful raft.
Copters cast shaking shadows. Your fingers trace
the dull floodmark on a bowering honeysuckle stand,
nurse the remains.
